


A Midwinter's Daydream

by sevensilvermagpies



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Fae & Fairies, Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare Quotations, and yennefer as the queen, geralt as oberon king of faerie, i stole a lot of phrases from shakeyspear sorry, this started with jaskier as puck and sort of wouldnt let me go
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:34:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23281810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevensilvermagpies/pseuds/sevensilvermagpies
Summary: “Either I mistake your shape entirely, or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite called Julian Goodfellow?” Her laugh tinkles on the breeze, shrill to his ears. “Are you not sheep-stealer, milk ruiner, or wife stealer? Come sprite, I recognise thine face.” Her pale hand stretches out to pluck a delicate yellow flower from his hair, “or should I call you Jaskier, or sweet puck, and then will you bring me luck?”He matches her pitched giggles with a sharp strum of his lute, bowing low in mockery. “Thou speak’st aright! I am that merry wanderer of the night."
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 1
Kudos: 25





	A Midwinter's Daydream

**Author's Note:**

> I apologise for nothing.

This was, Jaskier thought, not the best of all Geralt’s plans. He was the King yes, but he was also a hot headed fool. To call a meeting of the court, in a place he knew she would be, a half-baked gamble for a pretty trinket he hadn’t cared about before. And Jaskier had been having such fun with the humans and all their strange ways. But all was not lost, perhaps if this battle was as fierce as he hoped, he might weave a song from it. The thought brought a spring back into his step as he danced his way towards the woods. Any mother looking hence would have shivered to her core to see the young man, barefoot in the sheepfold without cloak or doublet in this most peculiar midsummer frost. But human eyes slid off him like water on the wing. 

He swung his lute off his back to play a little as he wandered through the bush, harmonizing with the faint laughter of human children in the field beyond. Upon a branch he alighted for a while, and hummed a merry tune, but when an unnatural silence heralded the passage of another, and he pricked up his ears.

“How now my Lady, whither wander thou?” 

It was a maiden of the Summer Court, dress as dark as the ocean and hair as golden as the sand. “I do wander everywhere, through flood and fire both, swifter than the moon’s sphere. And thou? Lob of spirits, what makes you linger still?” 

He let the glamour drop then, peeling back the human features to sit in a more comfortable skin. “The king doth keep his revels here tonight. Take heed the queen comes not within his sight, or I fear we will see something altogether more terrible than our imaginations conjure,” He hopped down from his branch and pulled her close, “Pray tell spirit, you know of the lovely princess, stole away from a bitter southern Queen? Geralt is fit to burst with flames of wrath, as she never had so powerful a changeling, and he would take her for his own, a witcher-knight to train.”

“I know of her. But tell me sprite what cause have I to trust a word you utter?” She pulls away from him then, gaze raking his body and probing into his mind. Finally her gaze alights on the pendant, a silver howling wolf which rings his neck, and she bares her fangs in glee. 

“Either I mistake your shape entirely, or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite called Julian Goodfellow?” Her laugh tinkles on the breeze, shrill to his ears. “Are you not sheep-stealer, milk ruiner, or wife stealer? Come sprite, I recognise thine face.” Her pale hand stretches out to pluck a delicate yellow flower from his hair, “or should I call you Jaskier, or sweet puck, and then will you bring me luck?”

He matches her pitched giggles with a sharp strum of his lute, bowing low in mockery. “Thou speak’st aright! I am that merry wanderer of the night. Bard and Barker of the great white wolf. I jest to him and make him smile.” 

“Now that I would give plenty to see…“

“Is it so rare fairy? but then your residence is in the court of our Queen, I cannot imagine much mirth dare goes there.” A step, perhaps, too far across the line as her blade scapes along the underside of his chin. 

“Ah I would not do so, if I were you…” the thundering of drums reaches them then, shaking the ground beneath them and swaying all the branches of the trees. Jaskier uses the distraction to dance away, merry on the music’s wing, fingers tripping over his strings. “For here he comes, brave witcher-king!”

“Would that he were gone!” snarls Sabrina, backing away, “For here comes my mistress also”

Yennefer is as terrifying as she is powerful, arriving head of a train of courtiers decked in shining sunlight. Her skin pulses with the fire which flowed like blood through her veins. The Queen of Faerie’s very breath brought all the forest to a standstill, even Jaskier’s fingers stopped their dance. The silence is choking, tension pressing heavy on the air, til Jaskier’s voice cuts through it like a knife. “Ill met by moonlight, proud Yennefer-” he is cut off with a squark, pulled out the air and tucked behind Geralt with nary a warning glance. 

“The foolish puck remains your voice I see. What husband-mine? Thou canst lower thyself to greet me as an equal” She scoffs, “oh come all! I forsworn his bed and company, for as long as he remains a jealous fool.”

She turns her back on them then, and Jaskier can see the clench in Geralt’s jaw, working his mouth a few times over as if chewing his words like the cud. “Am not I thy lord? Do not walk away from me.” He spits it out at her, frustration and anger building behind his teeth. For where she is power and action he is stone and earth. Cut through with precious metals and gems, a glittering core, but nonetheless course and rough to touch. 

“If you are mine own lord then I must be thy lady!” She laughs low and dark like the rumble of thunder, words crackling like sparks on a fire. “You, Geralt, spurn destiny without a care, you forget how precious balance is to this world.” 

“She is mine.” And oh this situation just grew a thousand times more foul, if Jaskier was a lesser fae he might shoot away back into the undergrowth. “The child was promised mine, our fates bound with destiny’s own hand-” 

“That is nothing but a jealous forgery,” she spits sulfur and burning sunlight, “And what good could thou ever give a child. It is your brawls which have stolen our peace! We have been unable to meet, neither dale nor forest nor mead has heard our song or felt our gentle steps upon them.” Her court was swirling around her, the wind sweeping them up in a thundering dance, chill cutting like a knife. 

“The fold stands empty in the drowned field, crows are fatted with the murrain flock, rivers have overbourne their continents, but you care not.“ Geralt stood stony faced in opposition to her, silent as the rock beneath his feet. Something within her cuts then; the wind gentling to a soft breeze, settling back into the earth the greenery it had torn up in anger. 

“Stubbornness may well be thine name, but not cruelty. Tis but a simple fix and perhaps the bard,” she smirks at Jaskier then, “can lend some of his plentiful words. These evils, they spring from our bitterness, we are their parents and original.”

The silence grows with every second, the courtiers trapped alongside their masters in a battle of wills, for who would break the sooner and win the child. Until, distaste coating his tongue, Geralt spoke. 

“Give me the girl and I’ll come with you.”

The forest exploded with chatter, hopeful whispers of the reunion of courts, muttering of fate and destiny. But Yennefer turned simply away, furious in her disappointment, tucking the child into the folds of her cloak. “Not for thy entire kingdom. The choice is thine, I will spare your haunts.” And her retinue melted into the forest's shadow, as if they never stood before them. 

Jaskier watched them disappear with a sorrowful gaze. Though his place was always at Geralt’s right hand, he longed to warm himself by the fires of the summer court, and pick up newer tales for his songs. So lost was he in dreams of firesides and warm ale that the hand on the scruff of his neck took him by surprise. He shouted half glee, half terror, as he was swung up into the arms of the white wolf, who held him serious and still. 

A plan was forming in the mind of the king, he could taste it upon the air. “A little western flower, before milk-white yet now purple with love’s wound. Some do call it love-in-idleness. You know it well?” The bard nodded gleefully, seeing the plans end. 

He would be glad to take a role in this revenge for it promised to taste sweet with mirth and ripe with love both. 

**Author's Note:**

> I know it didnt come up here but Sir Eyek as Bottom... priceless. 
> 
> Anyway I wrote this to get it out my system and I actually quite like some of it.


End file.
